| Volume 72 No. 9 | September, 2026 |
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The 1291st meeting of the Chicago Coin Club was called to order by President Melissa Gumm at 6:45pm CDT Wednesday, August 12, 2026. This was an in-person and online meeting with 16 members present at the CBA and 13 members online, for a total of 29.
Club Meeting Minutes
The July club meeting minutes were approved as published in the Chatter, both in print and on the CCC website.
New Memberships
Secretary Scott McGowan reported no new membership applications.
Treasurer’s Report
Treasurer Lyle Daly presented the July period report indicating revenue of $760.00 (Dues, ANA Banquet, Advertising) and expenses of $1,269.47 (Chatter expense, CBA room rent, AV meeting equipment, computer anti-virus) for a period total of -$509.47.
Old Business
New Business
Featured Program
Noah Graf on Dates and Dating Systems on Roman Imperial Coins, 27 BC to 717 AD. Following the presentation and Q&A, Deven announced that Noah will be presented with a speaker’s medal and ANA education certificate at a future date.
Show and Tell
Vice President Ray Dagenais announced the evening’s six Show and Tell presentations. A reminder to the club that in the summarizing of points for the show and tell, presenters receive extra points per presentation after giving five presentations.
President Melissa Gumm reviewed upcoming numismatic events, then adjourned the meeting at 8:45PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Scott McGowan, Secretary
by
Noah Graf
presented to our August 12, 2026 meeting
Collectors of modern coins tend to devote a substantial amount of energy to dates, especially year dates. Completing sets of all dates for a certain type is one of the most common collecting goals, especially for American collectors. However, for collectors of ancients, this focus is rare, mostly because modern-style calendar dating by fixed, sequentially-numbered “eras” did not yet exist, and where it did, it appears on coinage in forms that may seem very unfamiliar. My program will explore dates and the mechanics of dating systems as they appear on Roman Imperial coins. I am excluding Roman provincials from this program, out of a need for brevity and for a semblance of sanity.
Calendric Dating in the Ancient World
Mankind most likely has never been un-aware of the mental conception of a “year” –the repeated cycle of the sun through the sky, which can be matched to the cycle of the earthly seasons. But as humanity entered the age of what we now call “civilization,” a second mental conception leapt onto the scene: The natural cycle of seasons and the great celestial turn came to stand side-by-side with a linear sequence of days, months, and years. The psychological evolution of this linearity undergirds the entire conception of what we call History.
When and why mankind came to care about lines, sequences, and history can most likely never be known. But we do know when the evidence for it first emerged. Dating from what we would now call the mid-2400s BC, the so-called Palermo Stone is a work of the Old Kingdom era of Egypt. It is a remarkable list of several hundred sequential years, where each year is given a singular name from a significant event that happened in that year, most commonly a census of cattle or other property. It makes sense that this habit of naming years as “the year when such-and-such happened” would be the most primitive form of naming, as it would call to mind in the listener or reader a specific reference point in linear time with a memory that all were likely to share. That the Egyptians, already by 4-and-a-half thousand years ago, were keeping lengthy written records of these year-names indicates that they had clearly been doing so for a long time before that, likely back to around 3000 BC.
The reasons for keeping these lists long after the named year-events had passed out of memory can only be assigned to the development of what we today would recognize as proto-political or even to bureaucratic structure, the same element of human social organization which eventually gave rise to coinage itself. Whether nascent statehood generated the linear concept of sequential time, or whether it was the other way around, again, cannot be known, but what is clear is that political necessity and linear, historical memory are irrevocably intertwined.
There is no clearer example of this than the successor of the named year – the regnal year. In Egypt, starting around 2100 BC, in what historians call the First Intermediate Period, contemporary evidence appears for the first time of years named with longer numeric sequences according to how many years a local ruler had reigned. So, a year might be called “the 39th year of King Mentuhotep.” The practice may have been adopted from Ancient Sumer, where the earliest examples of compiled “kings lists” date from around the same time, the 21st century BC, indicating that Sumerian polities had already been keeping time in that manner for some centuries. This was the first emergence of what we might call dating by “eras,” but of course, these sequences were necessarily limited by the lifetimes of individual persons, and so they never reached beyond a few decades, but dating by regnal years did prove to be immensely popular, and it was adopted widely throughout the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean for millennia to come. Even where local political units, such as certain of the Ancient Greek city-states, did not have kings, they usually named the years by the terms of service of their chief political personages.
The first true era is that of the Seleucid Kingdom starting in the late 300s BC – a very long way from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. The Macedonian satrap Seleukos, one of the successor generals of Alexander the Great, ruled like most others, dating to his personal regnal years, beginning with his capture of Babylon in the late summer or early fall of 312 BC. For obscure reasons, his son and successor, Antiochus I, continued dating by his father’s regnal years, and soon this developed into what modern scholars call “the Seleucid era” known to Roman writers as the Anno Grecorum, “the Greek year.” Many Seleucid coins are, in fact, dated by this era.
Calendric Dating in Ancient Rome
The Ancient Romans may have dated their earliest years by the regnal years of their kings, who traditionally ruled from the mid-8th to the late 6th centuries BC, but even the Romans of the early Empire seem not to have had any evidence for that. Rome transitioned from Kingdom to Republic and each year came to be dated by the two men who together held the chief office of CONSUL. This office was elected annually, so there was no need for any sequential “era,” but it did result in the need for long sequential lists, similar to the Palermo Stone of 2,000 years prior. These lists were called the Fasti Consulares, and they recorded (in the longest and most formal manner) the names of each year taken from the men who served as Consul. In popular usage, the usual form was the Latin “Caesari et Bibulo consulibus” – the year that Julius Caesar and his colleague Marcus Bibulus were consuls, the modern 59 BC. The Fasti are thought to have been compiled, and thus reliable, only from circa 300 BC.
These lengthy year names were impossible to put on coins, and the Roman Republican moneyers preferred to add their own names to the coins struck under their authority. As a result, Republican coinage went undated.
With the transition of the Roman state from the Republican to the earliest Imperial system under Augustus, from 27 BC to his death in 14 AD (although in his own lifetime he adhered strictly to Republican forms of government), Rome began feeling its way toward a calendric “era,” similar to the Seleucid era then common in the Greek-speaking East. The sense of recording history “ab urbe condita” – from the foundation of the City of Rome – was known to Roman historians, but not with any degree of exactitude. Augustus ordered the official adoption of the calculation of Roman antiquarian Marcus Terentius Varro, who held that Rome was founded in the year now called 753 BC. Fasti drawn up during Augustus’ rule contain these artificial AUC years projected backward onto the old consular year lists, but the system was not popularly adopted, and the AUC era came to only be used for celebratory festivals, such as the 800th, 900th, and 1000th anniversaries of Rome in 47, 147, and 247 AD.
With only two known exceptions, the AUC era date NEVER appeared on coinage. The two exceptions, however, are interesting. In 121 AD, the Emperor Hadrian commissioned an aureus (RIC II 144) commemorating his foundation of a series of chariot races at the Circus Maximus in Rome on the festival celebrating the traditional day of the foundation of Rome, April 21st. This aureus bears the reverse legend ANN. DCCCLXXIIII NAT. VRB. / P. CIR. CON. – the 874th year since the “birth” of the city, and the first of Hadrian’s races. The second coin is a 248 AD antoninianus of the usurper Pacatian (RIC IV 6), minted at Viminacium in modern-day Serbia, with the reverse legend ROMAE AETER. AN. MIL. ET PRIMO – “to eternal Rome in its one thousand and first year.” Both of these exceptions wind up proving a rule about the AUC system – they were used in special and commemorative circumstances, more to emphasize the connection of Rome’s deep past with narrow political interests of the present rather than as a measure either of deep time or of bureaucratic precision and attention.
Suffice it to say, neither the most common Roman year dates (the consular system) nor the least common but most convenient (the AUC era) appear on Roman coinage as a matter of course. So, what did they use, and what did they use it for?
Dating Systems on Roman Coinage of the Principate (27 BC to 284 AD)
Augustus and his successors of the classical Roman Empire – a period called the “Principate” by historians, running from 27 BC to 284 AD – frequently added expressly datable events to their coinage, but not for the purpose of actually marking years of issue, of tracking mint quality, or recording the sequential passage of time. Instead, datable events were included on coinage to emphasize the emperor’s personal status and his achievements in government. Coinage of this period, for all Emperors, frequently makes note of the number of times that an Emperor had served as consul (still formally the highest office in the Roman state); the number of times he was hailed by the Roman army as “Imperator” (its supreme commander) for the defeat of Rome’s enemies; and the annual renewal of the emperor’s so-called “tribunician power” (in Latin, tribunicia potestas).
When Emperors put themselves forward as consul for several different years or have more than one salutation as Imperator, coins issued with those honors mentioned (usually in the form “COS III” or “IMP VII” or the like) can be firmly dated to the range between the mentioned number and the next one, or the Emperor’s death. Of course, the fact that this only narrows down a range shows how these are not true dates – they are personal honors listed to magnify the Emperor’s personal state authority.
It is the tribunicia potestas which is the only way that an explicit year date can appear on coinage to mark a specific year of issue. The tribunician power was one of the primary official, constitutional bases of the Roman Emperor’s state power. Derived from the Republican office of tribune, it carried with it the powers to convene the Senate, to veto bills, and a sacred, bodily inviolability which sacralized the person of the Emperor. But for our purposes, the most important factor is that it had to be renewed every year by a pro-forma vote of the Popular Assembly. Accordingly, it serves very much the same function as a regnal year era, albeit clothed in a formalistically Republican garb.
From the reigns of Augustus to Antoninus Pius (23 BC to 147 AD), the tribunician power was renewed every year on the anniversary of its first investiture, usually the day of the Emperor’s accession, so it was exactly equivalent to a regnal year. After 147 AD, Antoninus Pius changed the annual renewal to December 10th, the old Republican date when tribunes took office. Starting in 194 AD, the Emperor Septimius Severus again moved the annual renewal, now to January 1st, the date when the consuls took office, and the start of the Roman civil year. From this point, the Emperor’s pseudo-Republican “regnal” years and the named consular years aligned, both in their calendar and in our own.
Dating Systems on Coinage of the Later Roman Empire (284-498 AD)
The constitutional reforms of the Emperor Diocletian, starting shortly after his accession in 284 AD profoundly changed the Roman government and much of Roman society, including very noticeably its coinage, as is well-known to collectors of ancients. Less well-known, at least consciously, is the change to dating systems. Dating by tribunician power survives until 305 AD; but with Diocletian’s abdication in that year, it disappears from the coinage, surviving elsewhere only in scattered inscriptions until the end of the 4th century.
Dating by the number of consulates and imperatorial proclamations also fades quickly from the coinage after 305, with one very peculiar exception – a series of gold solidi struck under Theodosius II, almost certainly in 443 AD. On these, the reverse legend reads “IMP XXXXII COS XVII” – imperator for the 42nd time and consul for the 17th time. Theodosius II’s 17th consulate, according to the Fasti, was in our 439 AD, while his 18th was in 444. The consular date alone would fall somewhere in this range. However, narrative history records that this Theodosius had been made junior emperor at the age of only 9 months in January 402, and so the 42nd year after this was 443 AD. It seems, then, that at some unknown time in the late empire, the imperatorial proclamation had also become a pro-forma honor granted every year – either at its start or at the accession anniversary – and served as yet another regnal year, by proxy. This coinage of Theodosius II is a remarkable outlier which only serves to emphasize how little the three major classical, pseudo-Republican dating systems had ceased to matter as substantive indicia of state power by the 4th and 5th centuries AD.
So what took the place of the old dating systems? Not the AUC – that would be much too logical! No, in their place is the often problematic and confusing system of “vows dates,” by which were counted the public vows (in Latin, votae) taken by the emperors for either anticipated or completed service to the Roman state. Starting in the later reign of Constantine the Great (circa 315-337 AD), emperors of the 4th and 5th centuries would signal their devotion to the state and the longevity of their rule by issuing coins with the number of years – always in multiples of five – for which they had made religious vows of public service. The dedication of these vows exclusively in multiples of five makes their use as a mechanism for firm dating maddening at best and unworkable at worst. We are again encountering a dating system whose purpose was neither bureaucratic nor temporal but personal and sacral in nature, intended to demonstrate the emperor’s piety, dedication, and successful years of rule.
Late Roman Emperors known to have ruled for very short periods, even for less than a year, issued coins with legends like VOT V / MVLT X – “vows for 5 years of service, more for 10.” The best example of this is the coinage of the usurper Vetranio, who the Roman army elevated at the behest of the legitimate Emperor Constantius II’s sister and who, through her intercession, was allowed to peacefully abdicate, having only claimed imperial power for a few months in 350 AD. And yet, his coinage is replete with offers of “vows for 5, more for 10.”
This at least indicates that some vows dates must have been prospective in nature. Other clear evidence of this is certain coinage of Constantius II with the legend VOT XXXX, except that Constantius died in 361 AD in the 37th year of his reign. So, even when only a single vows date appears, it may only be prospective.
Vows dates, however, could also signify the commemoration of vows that have been kept. An unambiguous example of this appears in the solidi of Theodosius I (RIC IX 47a) and Arcadius (RIC IX 47a) at Constantinople, which BOTH show the text VOT V / MVLT X on the reverse and which also contain in the reverse legend, AVGGGG. The multiple G’s stood as Latin shorthand for an abbreviated plural. In the late 4th century, the number of G’s on coinage came to stand in for the number of recognized legitimate emperors. The only times in Theodosius and Arcadius” joint reign when there were four emperors recognized at Constantinople were 383 AD and circa 384/5-387 AD. The uncertainty of the second range aside, all of it lies beyond the close of Theodosius I’s fifth regnal year, and vows were never performed or commemorated beyond their completion. So, these two solidi must both come from the year 383 AD. That, in turn, requires the vows on Theodosius I’s coinage to be vows of completion, since 383 AD was his 5th regnal year, counted inclusively.
Furthermore, there is substantial numismatic debate over whether vows dated coins were only issued in the year that the vows mentioned were made, or whether the coins continued to be issued for the remainder of the 5 (or 10, or 20) year period envisioned in the inscribed vows. Personally, I feel it is most likely that gold and silver issues, since they were more precious, WERE only issued in the year the vows were taken, while bronze issues – which are MOST plentiful – probably continued to be struck until the vows mentioned on them were completed.
I could go on about vows dating, and I almost made this whole program about them exclusively, but in the end I felt it was too esoteric a topic with too few firm conclusions.
The “Byzantine” Coinage of the Later Roman Empire in the East (498-717 AD)
Over the course of the late 5th century AD, with the fading of the Empire in the West, dating of all kinds gradually disappeared from all Roman coinage. This absence, at first, continued through the coinage reform of Emperor Anastasius I, conducted around 498 AD, which functions as the conventional numismatic transition from the Roman to the “Byzantine” series. As far as the state and the people were concerned, however, this was still coinage of the Roman Empire.
The absence of dating on coinage ends abruptly in the year 538 AD, when Emperor Justinian I finally returned dates to the coinage. Under Justinian, for the first time in the more than eight-century history of Roman coinage, dates on coins now finally existed for the primary purpose of noting the year of issue. Now, since the spread of Christianity during the 4th century to be the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, “era” dates had somewhat come into vogue. There were eras from the Biblical Creation, from the Incarnation of Christ, from the Crucifixion of Christ, from the year of the Great Persecution under Diocletian. The modern Anno Domini calendar still used today across most of the world had only just been developed in 532 AD, although it had yet to gain much traction. Amidst all this era-building, Justinian instead chose to return to a somewhat more natural and definitely more monarchical system – the direct regnal year. Justinian’s Anno XII (538/539 AD) appears on the reverse of his coinage, next to the prominent central Greek letter noting the coin’s denomination. For almost the next two hundred years, this system would continue, and (East) Roman bronze coins would finally have dates that would be more or less familiar to a modern collector, albeit without an era. Gold and the very rare silver of this time remained date-less. After 541 AD, Justinian also ended the formal dating of years by the holders of the office of consul, still in existence but now practically a sinecure.
The next two centuries of numismatic dating familiarity would come to an end in 717 AD with the accession of the Emperor Leo III, who definitively removed any form of dating from his coinage. By then, butchered flans, bronze debasement, crudely-cut dies, and probably mass illiteracy among mint workers had taken their toll. Larger bronze issues would retain the reverse text ANNO XXX or XXX NNN as meaningless motifs. With only the briefest of outliers, the Eastern Roman Imperial coinage would remain totally undated for the rest of the Empire’s existence.
| Chicago Coin Company |
| Harlan J. Berk, Ltd. |
| Kedzie Koins Inc. |
| Classical Numismatic Group |
Items shown at our August 12, 2026 meeting,
reported by Ray Dagenais.
Reminders:
August 6, 2026
The August 2026 CCC Board meeting was called to order by club president Melissa Gumm at 6:12pm CST at Connie’s Pizza, Chicago, Illinois.
In attendance were Melissa Gumm, Deven Kane, Lyle Daly, Scott McGowan, Paul Hybert, Bill Burd, Steve Zitowsky, Jeff Rosinia, Tyler Rossi, and John Riley.
Old Business
New Business
The Meeting was adjourned by Melissa Gumm at 7:39pm CDT.
Respectfully Submitted,
Scott A. McGowan, Secretary
Next Board Meetings:
November 4, 2026 in person weather permitting
February 3, 2027 time, place TBD
| Date: | September 9 2026 |
| Time: | 6:45PM CDT (UTC-05:00) |
| Location: | Downtown Chicago
At the Chicago Bar Association, 321 S. Plymouth Court, 3rd or 4th floor meeting room. Please remember the security measures at our meeting building: everyone must be prepared to show their photo-ID and register at the guard’s desk. |
| Online: | For all the details on participating online in one of our club meetings, visit our Online Meeting webpage at www.chicagocoinclub.org/meetings/online_meeting.html. Participation in an online meeting requires some advance work by both our meeting coordinator and attendees, especially first-time participants. Please plan ahead; read the latest instructions on the day before the meeting! Although we try to offer a better experience, please be prepared for possible diifficulties. |
| Featured Program: | Josh Benevento —
Apollo on Roman Coinage: The Changing Image of a God
Explore how the image and meaning of Apollo developed on Roman coinage from the Republic through the Imperial period. Long before Augustus, Apollo was already a familiar figure on Roman silver, associated with prophecy, healing, music, and the arts. Under Augustus, however, his image took on an intensely personal and political significance, closely tied to Octavian, Actium, and the establishment of the Principate. Following Augustus, Apollo largely disappears from the imperial denarius for more than a century, despite remaining an important presence in Roman religion and culture, before returning prominently under Antoninus Pius. Through the coins themselves, this presentation looks at how one of Rome’s most enduring gods could take on very different meanings as Roman society, religion, and imperial power evolved. |
Unless stated otherwise, our regular monthly CCC Meeting is in downtown Chicago, and also online, on the second Wednesday of the month; the starting time is 6:45PM CT.
| September | 9 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - Josh Benevento on Apollo on Roman Coinage: The Changing Image of a God |
| September | 17-19 | ILNA 2026 Annual Coin & Currency Convention at a new location, the International Union of Operating Engineers Hall, 6200 Joliet Road, Countryside, IL 60525. Details, including hours and events, are available at http://www.ilnaclub.org/show.html |
| October | 14 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - James McMenamin on Around the World in 40 Coins – Reflections on Almost Sixty-Five Years of Coin Collecting and Fifty Years of Membership in the Chicago Coin Club |
| November | 11 | CCC Meeting - Club Auction, organized by Deven Kane and Richard Lipman - no featured speaker |
| December | 9 | CCC Meeting - Annual Banquet - details to be announced |
| January | 13 | CCC Meeting - Featured Speaker - to be determined |
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